Created by Rishabh Srivastava, Founder of Loki.ai
This summary was largely done for my own note-taking, sharing it just in case it adds more value to other people.
I have no affiliation whatsoever with anyone in this note. This is a summary largely taken for my own reference, and may contain errors :)
Context
Source URL:
Why is it important: Talks about how Rust can be a great tool for serverless
Keywords
Rust, WebAssembly, Serverless, Programming
Summary
Rust
- Rust is when you want the speed of C/C++, and the security of modern languages (great built in garbage collection — a missed pointer here or there doesn’t mess everything up)
- Rust is REALLY good at ensuring memory safety
- Assembly is the only language with no runtime. Rust, C, C++ have a very small runtime
- Rust raises a LOT of compiler errors. But once you get a feel for it, you can go really fast and make fewer errors
- Rust has a VERY steep learning curve. But it’s worth it (allegedly)
WebAssembly
- We went from markup → CSS → JS when the internet was first emerging
- We’re trying to make the web do a lot of crazy things
- There was a Mozilla project called asm.js a long time ago. It was a very optimizable, low-level subject of Javascript
- The reason asm.js was faster was because of the spec. It automatically used int32 instead of float which really sped things up, for example
- WebAssembly was the spiritual successor to asm.js. Everyone agreed on the spec for wasm
- You can also compile languages other than JS (like C, C++, Rust) into WebAssembly
- 93% of browsers can use WebAssembly natively (as of 3 Jan 2021). All modern browsers have wasm support
Rust + wasm = love
Most AssemblyScript has a large runtime.
Serverless Architecture
In IAAS, the VM provider said that I’ll give you a piece of hardware, you can SSH in, and then do whatever you want. Unix was essentially the interface programmers had to interact with the machine (Unix was essentially the API)
In PaaS (Heroku, GAE), you just installed an app. Your software language essentially became your API. This then evolved to docker and then kubernetes
Serverless: docker is a container. But a web browser is also a container. WASI is there too to create apps outside the browser.
A lot of the stuff in the WebAssembly/serverless space is built in Rust